


alone on a dark hill

by stelian



Category: Six of Crows Series - Leigh Bardugo
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Introspection, Stargazing, discussions of trauma, talking about feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-30
Updated: 2018-07-30
Packaged: 2019-06-18 13:01:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,132
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15486339
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stelian/pseuds/stelian
Summary: The last thing Kaz had expected as he entered his apartment, shucking off his suit jacket, was to see Inej sitting on his armchair flipping absently through a book. She’d broken in, of course; sometimes, he regretted teaching her how to pick locks (until he felt that rush of pride every time she picked her way inside). He’d taken one look at her, noticed the baggy sweater pulled over her scrubs and the small duffle bag at her feet, and he knew.“Do you have anywhere to be?” she’d asked.{or; Inej needs to get away and Kaz needs to clear his head, and a hilltop under the stars on a summer night will do just that.}





	alone on a dark hill

 

_Up the dome of heaven_  
_Like a great hill,_  
_I watch them marching_  
_Stately and still_

* * *

  


Even after years of living in a city, Kaz would never forget the serenity unique to country roads at night. There was no one else on the road- no blinding lights that would steal his focus, no prying eyes. There was just the occasional streetlight, the occasional reflection of his headlights in an animal’s eyes, and the thin starlight.

He felt, for the first time in a long time, peaceful. And so did Inej, judging by how her knees were curled up to her chest and her head rested on the window. She was either at peace or asleep. Either was an improvement on her earlier state of mind.

The last thing Kaz had expected as he entered his apartment, shucking off his suit jacket, was to see Inej sitting on his armchair flipping absently through a book. She’d broken in, of course; sometimes, he regretted teaching her how to pick locks (until he felt that rush of pride every time she picked her way inside). He’d taken one look at her, noticed the baggy sweater pulled over her scrubs and the small duffle bag at her feet, and he knew.

_“Do you have anywhere to be?”_ she’d asked.

_“No._ ”

_“Do you want to get away?”_

_“Fuck yes.”_

She’d sat there while he changed into comfortable clothes, downed three of his pain medicines, and grabbed a bottle of water, and then followed him to his car without a word. He knew not to question her, not now; this wasn’t the first time she’d asked him to drive. There was no explanation needed, no destination intended -- all she wanted to do was get enough distance between herself and her problems that, maybe, it would disappear in her absence.

“Do you know this road?” she asked, lifting her head a bit from where it had been tucked. Kaz glanced over and her eyes were narrowed, tilted up at the very top of the windshield. He wondered how long it had been since she’d seen more than a sprinkle of stars in the night sky.

“I do,” he said, after a moment. “It’s been a long time, but I do.”

Inej uncoiled herself the slightest big, starting with ler legs and ending with her hair. “I forget that you lived out here, sometimes.” _I forget a lot_ , were the words she didn’t speak but Kaz heard anyway.

“It’s been a long time,” he said again. It’d been a long time, but he still found himself drawn there every so often. Whether it was in his dreams, where he saw the rolling farmland surrounding him again, or it was the wandering thoughts that led him in circles as his mind struggled to keep up. He’d thought he’d be able to escape it some day, had even gotten so close, and then…

“How did your proposal go?” She was staring at him again, her eyes reflecting the dull glint of the dashboard lights. The sleepiness in her body had evaporated; she was Inej again, bright Inej who was ready for anything.

“Not right now.”

“Poorly?” she asked, and then laughed at the face he must have made. “People don’t want to combat antibiotic resistance, do they?”

_Not “people”_ , Kaz wanted to say, _just rich CEO’s who profit from the sick._ But instead he said, “They said our evidence wasn’t strong enough. We have _proven results_ , and Jes and I have been working on these cultures for _years_ , but it’s not ‘strong enough’.”

“It’s not marketable enough,” Inej said. “That’s all they care about. You’d think that curing dying kids would be marketable, but they’re scared. We’re creatures of habit, after all.”

Some creatures of habit they were, blinding themselves to what may save them. Or, alternatively, driving away from their problems instead of confronting them.

“I had a patient come in the other day with your disease,” she said after a heavy moment of silence. “She couldn’t breathe. Had the sores all over, could barely move. She was burning.”

_Firepox_ , the common name. It sounded like a close cousin to chickenpox; something that everyone got and was rarely fatal. What the name didn’t reveal was the horrid fever, the swollen lumps that cut off blood flow. Symptoms came quick and spread even quicker, and it was notoriously hard to treat. The first epidemic was bad enough, but antibiotic therapy worked well enough. Now, it shrugged off antibiotics and all other therapies; the only option was to let the fever run its course. Well. It didn’t have to be, except no companies would pick up another cure.

“What did you tell her?”

Inej’s eyes reflected the moonlight when she said, “I told her I had friends who were trying to get rid of it. Plus, when she pulled through, she’d have some badass scars.”

“ _If_ she pulls through,” Kaz corrected, and Inej winced. She took a moment to turn on the radio, flipping through channels until she found one of those late-night channels playing soft songs from decades ago.

“She should. She looked like a fighter. Otherwise healthy, young enough to have a strong immune system but old enough to not be vulnerable. I know I shouldn’t get attached, but…”

Nurses shouldn’t get attached to their patients. Microbiologists shouldn’t try to cure the disease that almost (should have) killed them. And yet, there they were. Kaz could swear for days that he didn’t really care about the disease, he just thought bacteria were kind of interesting and the industry was profitable, but he wasn’t fooling anyone at that point.

“How’s Nina?” Kaz asked. She often stopped by the lab if she was feeling well enough, but the last time he’d seen her she’d been in the wheelchair again, face far too pale. She’d gotten through medical school and a year of residency - near the top of her class and one of the favorites of all of her patients - and then the fainting had gotten worse, and Matthias’s accident happened, and…

“She’s doing okay right now. Trassel’s doing really well in his service dog training, and she’s been getting back on her feet. I saw her yesterday, and she looks… she looks like herself again.” She smiled, and there was a faraway quality to her voice when she said, “We walked to that waffle place again, and she didn’t faint once. I think she’s coming back to us.”

“Finally,” Kaz said, and he meant it. As much as he’d never admit it, he missed the Nina of the past. The quiet, unnatural stillness to her since she got sick was somewhere Wrong, and he’d even started to miss stopping for early-morning coffee with her and Matthias (because no one lived purely on coffee like a grad student, a surgeon, and a veterinarian).

He turned off of the highway and drove in silence as the headlights and streetlights tapered into nothing. This far from the city, it was just trees and farms and rolling hills. The air was cleaner, the stars were brighter, and life was freer. About 150 miles down the road there existed a sleepy farming town where, once in a different life, Kaz had been a child.

“Nina’s getting better,” Inej said. “Nina’s getting better, and they say that Matthias might wake up soon, and Wylan’s lab just got that huge grant, and Kuwei’s made so much progress on his proteins, and then…”

“And then there’s us,” Kaz finished. He looked over at her, knowing the road enough to be able to safely drive without watching the road for a bit. “What happened today?”

There were one hundred things Inej could say that would explain her current state. Instead…

“Are we stopping soon?”

“Soon.”

And true to his words the park was just up ahead. It wasn’t even a park, really; it was a little roadside patch of grass where a bench overlooked a stream. Kaz parked, grabbed his cane from the backseat, and held a flashlight in his other hand. “We need to walk through the stream,” he said, gesturing to the tiny, babbling bit of water. “Stream” was a generous term, especially with the recent drought.

Across the stream there was a tiny clearing in the trees, with the faintest hint of a long-gone path on the ground. He led the way, feet following the familiar trail that  up a hill he’d walked so many times when he was younger, ignoring the throb in his bad leg. The uneven ground, coupled with an hour of driving and a long and stressful day, meant he’d be aching more than usual for the next day or so, but it didn’t matter.

Finally, the trees gave way to a clearing at the top of the hill. Behind Kaz, Inej went still.

From this angle, they could see everything. In the distance there was the faintest hints of the lights of Ketterdam, little more than a few low-hanging stars on the horizon. The hills rolled on the other side, little patches of farms spread here and there. And above them, a nearly-full moon and an ocean of endless stars.

Kaz lowered himself onto a tree stump, leg stretched out to the side. Inej stood, silent, staring out at the country before them.

“My parents used to come here when they were young. Mom liked to stargaze, and Dad liked to get away, and this was perfect,” Kaz said, answering the question she didn’t have to ask. “After she died, Dad would drive us out here on her birthday. I always hated it because I thought it was boring, but…”

But Jordie loved the trees, and he loved the deer that would sometimes materialize in the woods, and he loved the quiet and the birds that would perch just out of sight. Kaz had been making an effort to open up to her, but there were some memories that couldn’t escape his throat.

“Did you ever come back?”

“Once.” It had been during undergrad, when he’d been slammed with exams during the week and a major presentation that weekend, and his pain was flaring and he felt sick and shaky all the time. He hadn’t come back intentionally; he’d just driven, empty minded, wanting to get away and never come back.

Inej settled beside him on the stump. There wasn’t room for both of them, really, but she was trying to get used to the warmth of a body beside her and he was trying to get used to the feeling of a body beside him.

There was silence, and then Inej finally spoke, her words seeming to echo in the vast silence. “I had a repeat patient come in this morning. I was working trauma, and I saw this girl that I _knew_ I recognized from somewhere. She was bleeding everywhere, and she was vomiting and feverish because her wounds were infected, but she was silent. She almost didn’t even seem like she was in pain. She was just tired.”

Her breath hitched, and she seemed to shift herself the slightest bit away from Kaz. She was retreating again, pulling up the walls that couldn’t save her from her memories regardless of how hard she tried. “I was the one who found the burn on her arm. It was shaky, and there were bits of ink still visible, but I knew what it was. When I saw it, she smiled. Just the slightest bit.

“She coded an hour later. Septicemia came for her, and she didn’t stand a chance by the time she came in. There was no family to come for her. We didn’t even get her _name_. But I knew where she came from, and I couldn’t do anything for her.”   

Neither the stars nor Kaz had a response for her. Instead, he offered her the best he could give -- a quiet, solid presence beside her, a reminder that they were in the present and she was safe, there was a bit of hope in the future.

“Thank you,” Inej said after a moment, drawing her sweater closer around her shoulders as the late-night summer breeze began to stir. “When I left work, I felt like I needed to hurt someone, and I was falling apart everywhere. And now we’re here.”

Here, under galaxies and nebulae that were far beyond their reach.

She reached out, then, her hand searching for his in the small space between them. Kaz took a breath, willed away the visions, and curled his fingers around hers.

They would be okay.

In a few hours the sun would rise, and time would keep moving forward, and they would be okay.

* * *

_And I know that I_   
_Am honored to be_   
_Witness_   
_Of so much majesty_

_\- Sara Teasdale, "Stars"_

**Author's Note:**

> the title and quotes for this fic come from the beautiful poem "stars" by sara teasdale, which is very near and dear to my heart due to the choral version. [take a listen to it!](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KWdjF2K2bZA)
> 
> this is part of a larger au that came about through watching a lot of grey's anatomy in a really short amount of time while working in a microbiology lab. the essential idea is that everyone is involved in a science/medical field - inej is a nurse, nina is a surgeon, matthias is a vet, kaz and jesper are microbiologists, wylan is an inorganic chemist, and kuwei is a molecular biologist. will i ever write more in this verse? perhaps. 
> 
> as always, thank you for reading! feel free to hit me up on [the tumblr](pippims.tumblr.com) to yell about gay murder children!


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